2015’s horror highlights is comprised of mostly obscure indies that no one seems to appreciate. Take for example Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here, a deceptively complex ghost story which pivots around an old couple. It’s a genre treasure trove which I imagine cultists and academics will look back to with a smile, yet no one talks about it. The Bergman-esque Queen Of Earth deserves more attention than the usual rounds at critics’ festival coverages, and Bone Tomahawk is a work of a Tarantino child that’s unfairly being boxed in the shadow of its obvious influencer.
That being said, films like David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows are drawing mainstream attention—which is great, these horror indies don’t find amassed audiences like that every day!—compelling perplexed film writers to write perplexing thought pieces on the film. To S.T.D., or not to S.T.D., is what most of them are saying. It’s film discussion nonetheless—I’ll take it.
Goodnight Mommy, another film that mainstream audiences consume unprepared, is released to a generally kind reception. How does one prepare for the film, you ask? Watching Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman—a film of kin penchant for dread and fabulous architecture. All this build up to the successful festival run of A24’s latest offering The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers, for which critics flipped so hard it’s difficult not to get excited. I obviously haven’t seen it yet, but it’s easily my most anticipated horror of 2016.
Speaking of yet-to-see horror films, you won’t be seeing the following in this list: Trevor Juras’ The Interior; February, the debut feature of Anthony Perkins’ son, Osgood; and Perry Blacksheer’s They Look Like Us are films (including Robert Egger’s The Witch) that I obviously didn’t get the chance to see.
From Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy to Brian James O’Connell’s Bloodsucking Bastards to Sherad Sanchez’s Salvage, here are 16 of the best horror films of 2015.
[divider]The Year In Horror: Best Horror Films of 2015[/divider]
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1.) Alleluia
Fabrice Du Welz’s latest is a film riddled with gore and perversion—a lean and grotesque story of a sociopathic Bonnie and Clyde. Of note are actors Lola Dueñas and Laurent Lucas, whose performances are both electric; and cinematographer Manuel Dacosse whose thought-out framings and frequent close-ups contribute greatly to the film’s unease.
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2-3.)
Bloodsucking Bastards / Cooties
Two tales of the horrors found in corporate. Brian James O’Connell’s Bloodsucking Bastards is about an outbound sales company recruiting efficient vampire employees in place of slacking human ones. Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s Cooties, meanwhile, gets a group of elementary teachers tortured by their undead students. Both are too precious horror-comedies to pass up on either one. I particularly enjoyed the office humor in Bastards—”Should we be intervening here, I mean we are losing a lot of employees”, inquires a vampire delegate, to which the boss vampire replies: “Nah, don’t worry. They’re mostly from marketing.” The delegate quips: “Okay, I will just run an ad.”—and particularly Allison Pill in Cooties, because Allison Pill.
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4.) Bone Tomahawk
A grisly horror-western by way of John Ford’s The Searchers, S. Craig Zahler’s curious yet assured debut film features a terrific Kurt Russell, and a bat-shit crazy, gleefully grotesque final scene that does Tarantino proud.
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5.) The Boy
Craig William Macneill’s hypnotic thriller about a troubled young boy is as about as brooding and intimate psychopathic portraits can get. On the onset, it’s clear that the film is not a question of if, but of when the boy in question will embrace his obsession with death. And when he does, you come out of the film with one part of you dented, and then some more.
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6.) Creep
This deceptively complex story of a dangerous sociopath is mainly anchored by a strong, instinctual performance by Mark Duplass. In the Patrick Brice-directed film he talks about a brain tumor, a heart-shaped body of healing water, a friendly werewolf named Peachfuzz–all of which you take for the sincere truth. You buy every thing he says, which means you’re small game for him.
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7.) Crimson Peak
Guillermo Del Toro builds worlds. His new film Crimson Peak is a whole new plane of existence. The world in which Mia Wasikowska’s prejudiced Shelley-fanatic dwells in is realized up to the bit of its details. The house, the frost that engulfs it, and the people that populate its world are more interesting than the ones in yours. It’s trademark Del Toro: you leave the theater inspired by sheer filmmaking.
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8.) Cub
Campsites have grown to be an all-too familiar setting for slasher films. Flemish filmmaker Jonas Govaerts knows better than to retread the tropes of the sub-genre. His debut feature is closely focused on its on-the-verge troubled protagonist who acquaints himself with a feral creature from within the woods. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable exercise in gore and perversion.
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9.) Felt
Jason Banker’s disarming tale of a young woman in the throes overflows with concepts and ideas at the costly expense of an otherwise more compelling narrative. Yet, one is unable to discount the sheer atmosphere of the film which renders its effect nonetheless disquieting.
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10.) Goodnight Mommy
Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala makes a modern fairy tale of the Austrian film Goodnight Mommy, in which impressionable young twins plot against their increasingly indifferent mother. The bulk of the film—the children at clash with their mother—feels like Viggo Mortensen fighting his way out of the sauna. It’s tense, severing, primal.
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11.) It Follows
The only preparation you need coming in to David Robert Mitchell’s sleeper hit It Follows is the knowledge that the director is an adept storyteller of small stories. His debut feature The Myth of American Sleepover is a deluge of youthful anxieties in American suburbia. Set in the same milieu, the deeply terrifying new horror is about an unknown force that torments teenagers who fall prey to their innocent curiosities and wild perversions.
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12.) Queen
Of Earth
Elisabeth Moss in a destabilizing portrayal of a woman over the brink of sanity and melancholia. Katherine Waterston in the unenviable burden and mystification of a woman who must look after her best friend. Alex Ross Perry in his best form, making a film either about coping with self-perpetuating cycles of defeat, or about two loaded best friends holed up in a large guesthouse off-New York.
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13.) Salvage
The debate is still out for found-footage’s “anti-visual” nature. It’s only when Imburnal-director Sherad Sanchez ushers his best (yet), in which Jessy Mendiola’s news crew realizes a second too late that the town is not as tame as they thought, that you are nudged to decide yes. It’s a hypnotic look at rural horror, melding the faux and the vérité of the sub-genre and aesthetic.
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14.) Spring
Think the story of Jesse and Celine bent with pure Lynchian unease. The latest from creative partners Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead finds horror in fast-forged romances. You get drawn to the two protagonists too easily. You fall in love with them as they do with each other. Even though the romance takes a swerve for the strange, like every trip to Italy, you can’t say it doesn’t leave you unmoved.
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15.) We Are
Still Here
Barbara Compton and Andrew Sensenig star in Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here, a film whose languid pace and retro horror sensibilities make for a transporting experience that gives Lucio Fulci—and the long list of the film’s forebears—an homage they deserve.
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16.) When Animals Dream
The horror in Jonas Alexander Arnby’s werewolf film lends itself to womanhood in a Scandinavian town, where prejudice, besides sardines, is the main commodity. At ninety minutes the indulgent ruminations and melancholies stretch out, the film feeling more a mood piece than a fully-formed story. The final moments we share with Sonia Suhl’s conflicted tween do not promise anything in particular—who knows where she ends up next? Prejudice is among the unholy things that happen to be omniscient to this earth.
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Honorable Mentions
The following films didn’t make the cut, but I still urge you to watch them:
Anthony DiBlasi’s Last Shift, because it’s straightforward genre fun; Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno, because at this day and age you need a troll in your existence; M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, because it’s not only Justin Bieber that’s deserving of a stone-cold redemption; Sion Sono’s Tag, because he’s a guilty pleasure we all share; Tikoy Aguiluz’s Tragic Theater, because it’s the only other Filipino horror film in 2015 that’s at least thematically coherent; Rodney Ascher’s The Nightmare, because R.I.P. Wes Craven, I’ll forever hold you very dearly; Mari Asato’s Fatal Frame, because it’s gorgeous and isn’t too insistent in marketing to you the video game on which it is based; Michael Dougherty’s Krampus, because there’s nothing like seeing Adam Scott and Toni Collette barely surviving a Christmas eve; and finally, The Final Girls, because we all need that one horror movie that pokes fun at other horror movies.
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